sweet, with soft voices and fair hair-and such women are very charming; but in every class there are some who are called upon to do the work of the world; and the world in which we live not being a very angelic place, it will not always do to have angels at work in it. I used to admire Frau Mässinger for her active life and unselfish toil, and even for her shrewdness and keenness, unfeminine though it may have been.

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Ach, it is you, Herr!' she said, in her shrill harsh voice; I didn't look for you our way again. May be it's the Fräulein as has brought you. Oh weh!'-and she sighed as if the sorrow that is in the world came very near her own heart, and wrung out the expression of her sympathy-'God knows there's trouble enough in the world, and we've had enough ourselves since you were last at the Villa; and now Heinrich is ailing, and he says the only cure for him is the churchyard.'

As Frau Mässinger spoke, she lifted up the corner of her apron, and wiped her eyes.

It was a strange mixture-the harsh voice, the keen cunning expression, the self-reliance of her active, business-like nature, and the touch of motherly affection that still blended with it all.

Newton knew enough of Frau Mässinger not to argue the worst from her lamentations; there was rarely sufficient joy in her heart for her to indulge in any other strain, and, whatever happened, she was sure to find some cause for murmur and repining.

'I suppose he is not married?' said New ton, as his thoughts involuntarily wandered to a little village church in England, and a pretty bride, looking all happiness and joy, whom he had once seen in this very room, by Heinrich's side, and had imagined their future undivided.

'Ach, there it lies!' ejaculated the old woman; and putting up her apron again, she wept with as much energy as she usually worked.

'I may see Heinrich, may I not?' interposed Newton, glad of anything that he

could say to distract the good woman's thoughts; but just then the old man himself appeared, with a huge tankard in one hand and a jug of the sourest of wine in the other, and placing both on the table as if they were made of lead, he came up to Newton, and in his old indistinct voice exclaimed:

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Right welcome, mein Herr!'

Frau Mässinger dropped her apron; her sorrow was too vehement not to be quickly over, and a few minutes after she was chaffing her husband at not having known the stranger. The old miller received her bantering as submissively as usual: he was no match for it, and in his younger days, before he had done honour to too many feasts by getting tipsy at them, he had had the good sense to perceive and to acknowledge this. The habit remained: whenever his wife scolded or ridiculed him, Mässinger's face always assumed an expression of submission, and this seemed to blunt the force of her attack.

Newton put his lips to the sour wine with

some repugnance; then he held out his tankard to knock the mug which his host had taken from the shelf and had filled for himself.

Mässinger never lost an opportunity of doing his duty in this way; his wife might frown and nod, but the old miller knew the cask that held the best wine, and when a stranger came, and he an Englishman and an old visitor at the villa, Mässinger was not going to draw from an every-day cask, and, more than this, he was not going to let him drink it alone. Newton knocked glasses, or rather mugs, and thought of Heinrich as he did so; but he did not express the thought. The old miller apparently was thinking of nothing but the draught before him, and Frau Mässinger, with one hand on the latch of Heinrich's door, waited with the finger of her left hand on her lips till the mute merry-making was over. Then she beckoned Mr. Newton into Heinrich's room. But the Heinrich of old was no longer there. Newton thought so, as he remembered him

with his fine, well-made figure, coming down the ladder from the mill with his sack on his shoulder, or turning the wheel to crush the apples, or threshing in the barn, laughing as he did so, as if the labour were nought, or perhaps teasing Rosa, while he lightened. her share in the work.

Where was the Heinrich of long ago now? He was lying on the bed, with his thin hands crossed outside the coverlet, and his wan emaciated face looked as white as the pillow on which it rested.

A tall slim figure, in deep black attire, made after the fashion of a nun's, left the bedside as Newton entered, and, drawing her coif closer over her face, walked to the other end of the room.

'You are not going already, Fräulein Nesta?' said the sick man, looking towards her. Involuntarily Newton followed the direction of his eyes, bright and yet lustreless as they were.

The face turned round; much of it was hidden by the black close-fitting headdress,